Skip to main content

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe
Live text

2019 Italian Grand Prix

Live Text

Sort by
"I need more power, man," Hamilton asks Mercedes. The effort in his voice betrays the tremendous effort he was putting in.
As well as the 'advantage' the 2019 Ferrari engine was giving Leclerc in his battle with Hamilton, it must be said the 21-year-old placed his car perfectly through Parabolica onto the main straight lap after lap.
Vettel is about to get lapped by Leclerc and Hamilton - really not a good afternoon as he lets them by on the run to Ascari, his favourite corner.
Norris and Gasly are engaged in a super-close scrap for 10th - with the McLaren driver giving his former/current (back then) race engineer an earful for talking to him as he engaged the Toro Rosso. They later made up and had quite the emotional farewell in Abu Dhabi a few months later.
Like Sainz, Kvyat had just pitted, with his car already smoking as he left the pits, and it gave up just a few corners later.
It was later revealed that a loss of oil pressure caused Kvyat's retirement.
Kvyat is out with a smoking Toro Rosso at the first chicane.
McLaren didn't have an immediate explanation of what happened at Sainz's stop, but replays show he left his pitbox with the red light still on on the team gantry.

"An attempt was made to tighten the nut with the wheelgun," read our magazine report's explanation, "although Sainz then left his pitbox while the red light was still clearly showing. This was likely thanks to automated systems that do not allow the lights to change to‘release’if the torque on the wheelnuts is not adequate."
The virtual safety car is activated as Sainz's car is parked at the pitlane exit.
Sainz is out of the race with a loose wheel after his stop!
This was our assessment of Mercedes' tactics in this race, from former grand prix editor Edd Straw's magazine race report:

"The plan was for Hamilton to force Leclerc into making a stop to cover the potential undercut. Bottas, who had a strong first stint and was never more than 1.471s behind Hamilton at the end of a lap, was left out to give him a tyre- life offset in the hope that he could also challenge Leclerc late on – ideally once Hamilton was in the lead."
Mercedes opted to leave Bottas out for longer to take advantage of the two-pronged attack strategy that Vettel had gifted the Silver Arrows.
Leclerc and Hamilton have cleared Ricciardo and moved up to second and third behind the yet-to-stop Bottas.
Thanks to Jake Boxall-Legge for providing us with that tech insight. He's a good (Easter) egg.
Why was the Ferrari so good in a straight line? First off, let's delve into the murky (and tedious) world of fuel flow. Each F1 car has a standard fuel flow sensor that checks whether the 100kg/h fuel flow limit is being observed - and it measures that at intervals. So if you can work out when the intervals are, and pump more fuel into the car between them above the 100kg/h limit, you've got more power available. Allegedly, this was behind the SF90's relentless quali pace too...
"He's super-fast on the straights," reports Hamilton.
The black-and-white flag rule came into the news at this stage of last season as the FIA opted to implement a 'yellow card' style warning for driving on the limit of acceptable.
But Leclerc clearly edged over in his extremely robust defence, which earned him a black-and-white flag warning.
Wow - even months later that got us excited, so excited we saw contact that didn't exist.
"He didn't leave me a car's width - he pushed me off!" Hamilton complains.
Contact! Leclerc and Hamilton clash at the approach to the second chicane!
Hamilton attacks to the outside of Turn 1 on lap 23 - it's so close between them.
But after the stops, with Leclerc having to pass Hulkenberg, Hamilton switches to all out attack on his softer tyres.
In the first stint, Hamilton didn’t drop to the customary margin of two seconds behind and instead stayed with Leclerc while trying to keep the soft tyres alive.
Right now, this race becomes a classic - with Hamilton right on Leclerc's gearbox and harrying the young Ferrari driver.
Hamilton has the advantage right now as his tyres warmed up faster.
The crucial difference is that Leclerc went onto the hards, with Hamilton on the mediums.
“That was the only play,” Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff will say of his team's strategy later on. “We knew the overcut would not work enough left in the tyres. Sainz and the Renaults were in our window.”
Leclerc pits to cover Hamilton - and he just stays ahead of Hamilton.
Hamilton pits from second - trying to undercut Leclerc. And it was crucial to stay ahead of Sainz, which he did.
Raikkonen gets a 10s stop/go for starting on "incorrect" tyres.
Albon gets a five-second time penalty for cutting the chicane ahead Magnussen 'earlier-on'. Seven months earlier, in fact.
This phase of the race was critical for the leaders as it was a clear one-stopper, but the pace of the Renaults and Sainz in P4-P6 meant there wasn't a clear spot for re-joining.

By: Jake Boxall-Legge

Published: